THE MAYAS

131

yond all guesswork. But at the present time, we can
do little more than determine the dates recorded upon
the monuments, buildings and other remains of the
remarkable people.

No doubt the immense, elaborately carved stelae,
or stone monuments, which are so typical of the

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Figure 14.

Mayan culture, were primarily date records, for we
know that those at Qmrioigua, Guatemala, were
erected at definite periods of five Tuns or years of
three hundred and sixty days. But it is fairly well es-
tablished that these monuments were also of great re-
ligious or ceremonial significance. Many were of
enormous size, up to twenty-four feet in height above
the earth and four or five feet square, and covered,